Windows 7 Is the Next Windows XP 504
snydeq writes "Windows XP's most beloved factors are also driving business organizations to Windows 7 in the face of Windows 8. 'We love Windows 7: That's the message loud and clear from people this week at the TechMentor Conference held at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Wash. With Windows XP reaching end of life for support in April 2014, the plan for most organizations is to upgrade — to Windows 7,' indicating 'a repeat of history for what we've seen with Windows releases, the original-cast Star Trek movie pattern where every other version was beloved and the ones in between decidedly not so.'"
Best Windows 8 Review Ever (Score:5, Informative)
I'd like Win 7 a bit more .. (Score:3, Informative)
If only I could get rid of many of the most annoying features, like those damn pop-up previews along the task bar - f**king hell those are annoying.
I try to get it to look as plain as possible, I don't go for whizzy aero/glass/whatever looks. I just want things to work, because I'm often stressed and whizzy gets on my nerves.
The plan is to upgrade — to ReactOS (Score:2, Informative)
Providing they actually reach beta status by April 2014.
Re:Does the OS really matter? (Score:5, Informative)
I have, and for my work its too limited while fucking up every office 2007-2010 format ever sent to me
yay its free, now all I have to do is reformat every table in this 30 page document of tables cause nothing fits on a printed page anymore yay!
its fine for home use
Re:I'd like Win 7 a bit more .. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'd like Win 7 a bit more .. (Score:5, Informative)
You can get your individual taskbar buttons back but selecting the "Combine when task is full" or "Never combine" option in Taskbar properties.
Disabling the preview popup requires a registry or group policy setting. Google it.
Re:No kidding. Anyone remember... (Score:5, Informative)
The issue with WinME was this: it would accept both older VxD drivers and newer WDM drivers. Their jerry-rigged solution to make VxD drivers work made the system extremely unstable. But as long as you used only WDM drivers, it was solid.
Re:The plan is to upgrade — to ReactOS (Score:5, Informative)
I've watched that project for years. Here is the main reasons for the slow progress:
1) "why not just use WINE on linux!? OMG WTF BBQ!!"
Perhaps the people who constantly stream into the ROS IRC channel asking that question could take 30 seconds and read the *FAQ* which clearly states why. No, they have to be a fanboi, waste people's time, and demoralize developers asking repitious qestions, and generally being assholes and transferring anti microsoft fud onto a foss project. *IF* they had bothered to do so, they would know that ROS and WINE share patches. But because they didn't, they don't, and just spew inane nonsense.
2) "Like, LOLZERS, your project is like, emulating 9x or something right?"
No. It reimplements the NT kernel and win32 usermode architectures. It is actually closer to 3 projects rolled into one: an NTLDR compliant boot loader (FreeLDR), a reimplementation of the NT kernel space, and a reimplementation of the windows GUI subsystem that even works on windows as a shell replacement. Most FOSS projects deal with just ONE of those things. (GRUB for boot loading, Linux Kernel, and various WM flavors like Gnome, KDE, and pals.) Reactos has FAR fewer developers than all of those.
3) "bland ordinary C is a REQUIREMENT!? What? I can't use C++, Java, Ruby, Python, or $languageHere!? What are you, a bunch of philistines!?"
Reactos uses only standardized C. It does this for a wide assortment of reasons, including having to implement pretty much everything from the ground up, including SEH, and a number of other things. It has to run quickly, leanly, and efficiently on bare metal, because they are also writing kernel mode components. High leve languages carry too much baggage, or make improper assumptions and aren't suitable. Sorry. If you want to use your high level language to right win32 usermode applications using the published api, feel free. But ROS won't include it in the package.
4) "Dude, NOBODY in the FOSS world knows all the ins and outs of MS's platforms! We use FOSS software for a reason, you know!"
Yeah. They pretty much know that already. Why do you think they have such a shortage of developers? They don't need to be reminded of that. They are trying to change that by making an OPEN reimplementation of windows, including the kernel space. You know, so you have more choices than just the BSD kernel and the Linux kernel. You could be more constructive and maybe help them instead of snipe crass comments or something.
5) "Isn't MS windows a moving target?"
Yes. Yes it is. However, a *lot* of "features" in microsofts offerings are probably best left out anyway. They are focusing on core functionalities. That's a significantly easier target.
Re:Excellent News! (Score:2, Informative)
How you shut down the machine hasn't changed since windows XP. You press the freaking power button.
There's a reason that computers have software-based shutdown. Because less shit goes wrong than when you hit the power button.
Re:Win8 is just Win7 SP2 (Score:4, Informative)
whatever you want to call it, its not release
What part of Release To Manufacturing (RTM) is unclear to you?
Re:Excellent News! (Score:5, Informative)
If you collect statistics, then you need to make sure that the sample you are collecting is representative of the population. Otherwise your statistics are invalid. This is basic statistics (and something to keep in mind for poller "Internet Panels" that try to measure anything to do with the general population rather than the Internet using population).
If your sample isn't representative of the population then you need to adjust your results by weighing so that your sample statistics correspond closer to those in the population. Now, maybe Microsoft tried to do something like that but, since there isn't any kind of baseline questionaire when you agree to let them get feedback, it would be pretty difficult for them to establish weighing categories for the sample that can be adjusted to match corresponding category proportions in the Windows user population.
Re:Excellent News! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Excellent News! (Score:5, Informative)
Sysadmin here:
* No major problems adjusting to Win7 after I set the theme to Windows Classic. Running it with all the bells and whistles confuses people.
* Running users as standard users is still the same pain in the neck. Running users as administrators and it will still ask you to click through a bunch of crap which pops up EVERYWHERE. However some applications don't request elevated rights but still need it (Java-based programs for instance) and as a result they simply crash with no message whatsoever.
* Users are still dumb and will click everything. I simply wipe the system if a malware infection occurs but I don't see a big difference in rate.
* Device drivers for Win7 is a pain in the neck with the signing and the x64/32-bit. I have to hack in certain drivers and some manufacturers still haven't released a driver and XP drivers although they use the same model and similar kernel simply can't be used for some reason.
* I never had much use of the MS imaging tools
* Unless you have bog-standard hardware sleep and hibernate still doesn't work reliably and for some reason laptops keep waking up when closed.
Other issues:
* Have an external PCIe card? Won't even hot plug. Needs a full reboot.
* The MS high-res timer drivers are crap on Windows 7 and software can't take exclusive control over them
* Video card retrace signals are horribly inaccurate and software can't take exclusive control over them
* Want to set a system with 120Hz or higher refresh rate? We'll also encrypt that signal for you with HDCP even though no content is playing back and screw up your whole custom DVI-D setup
* Very slow SMB copy (20MBps where it should be 120MBps). Teracopy (3rd party software) solves the issue.
* Still no native NFS/LDAP/Kerberos support
Re:Excellent News! (Score:5, Informative)
XP did not 'work' from the beginning. It wasnt until SP2 it was a respectable and stable OS and even then SP3 smoothed it more. XP taught me to image the drive right after main install finishes because drivers could completely bork the install and you'd be back at square one. . There is still a ton of cruft left in my workflow because of how shitty XP was in the beginning.
Re:Excellent News! (Score:5, Informative)
Erm... no.
On windows you actually set the behaviour of the power button (power options under control panel, edit a plan settings, then advanced settings, power button and lid options). By default I believe a 4 second press just hard reboots the computer and that's outside of the OS, but the power button will variously be configured to hibernate, sleep or shut down the machine.
Now if you're not exceptionally savvy on the difference you may not realize when it has hibernated versus slept or the like, but they aren't the same thing, and that's sort of the point, your 4 options (shut down, sleep, hibernate, restart) should all be in the same place, and you shouldn't need to do a google or bing search to find out how to do so.
Re:Excellent News! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Excellent News! (Score:5, Informative)
It's not like you have to wait for Microsoft. The already is an an open source shell [sourceforge.net] the emulates the old Windows behaviour.
Re:Excellent News! (Score:5, Informative)
Still no native NFS/LDAP/Kerberos support
It's called Active Directory.